Top-Down or Bottom-Up Automation. Is that the Question?
/For this series of posts, Terri is thrilled to be joined by Brett Li of Tonkean. Brett and Terri had a great discussion on “human-in-the-loop” workflows and we’ll be taking three different angles on looking at how this works in the real world. The first (this post) is about top-down and bottom-up approaches to adding automation to our work. In the second, we focus on the value of the operations role (or chauffeur) in adding automation. The third (link to follow) will be more tailored to how individuals can add automation to their work. For all three, we’ll explicitly consider how talent, technology, and technique come together to help us reach our targets given the times we’re working in. That is, we’ll be taking a Thinking in 5T™ approach.
Top-Down
Automation tools are growing in number, capabilities, and investment. For example, Gartner says that the robotic process automation area grew 63% in 2018. People are paying greater attention to how automation will affect work. CFOs, CIOs, Heads of HR and other functions are implementing automation to improve business efficiency, lower costs, and drive revenue. This has resulted in new practices, and jobs are changing as a result. A couple of great books to get introduced to these topics are Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work and Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI.
However, both books and much of the general attention focus on the top-down application of target, technology, and technique. We can see why -- for example, access to organizational data may need top-down support, technology tools may be too much for an individual to fund on their own, and it will likely help if changes are made in a cross-organization, coordinated way.
Bottom-Up
But there is also value in a bottom-up approach. Organizations that take solely a top-down approach to automation with only a focus on business impact tend to run into issues with change management and negative impact on employee morale -- this is where a lot of the fear of automation comes from. Due to the fact that processes are designed without thinking about how they affect individuals, top-down automation can force unwanted behavioral change. If organizations look at implementing automation including a bottom-up approach, they may end up with more diversity/options for improvement as more people look for ways to augment or accentuate their work. The combined approach can also result in more benefit for the business as a whole because the people who are closest to and most familiar with the process and pain can implement automation optimally.
How about Both Up and Down?
The reality is, automation shouldn’t be an either-or question. Tonkean, for example, works to meet people where they are rather than making them learn yet another tool (sounds similar to discussion Terri had with Ram Menon of Avaamo). Tonkean acknowledges the value of both top-down and bottom-up approaches as organizations consider augmenting human work and adding automated assistants. Tonkean recommends taking a people-first approach to process design, where the impact on both the business and individuals are thought of with the same amount of priority. Then, by applying automation around the people while keeping humans-in-the-loop, organizations can optimize processes while simultaneously ensuring people are focusing on the things that matter. So, while the interest and support may be top-down, the practice of bringing automation is, in fact, bottom-up.
This dynamic is clear in this video of Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and Co-Founder of Tonkean, where he even draws a chart that looks a lot like Terri’s (Plugged-In Manager, Chapter 4) suggestion for negotiating a change that considers the needs of all the stakeholders.
Take-Away
Top-down and bottom-up are the way to go. That approach results in better ideas, better implementation, and better value. Those that sit at the hand-off between top-down and bottom-up approaches are operations teams. We will explore the vital role they play in implementing automation in our next post.
